From Pool Store Boy to Serial Entrepreneur: How Matt Giovanisci Built a Multi-Million Dollar Niche Business

Yong-Soo Chung:
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to work forever in the same industry where you got your first ever job? Well, Matt Giovanisci doesn't need to imagine it, because that is exactly what he's been doing for over 20 odd years of his life.

 Matt Giovanisci:
It was my first summer job as a 13 year old kid. I worked at a pool store, and so did that. Worked my way up, transferred to different stores that were a little bit bigger, all in the pool industry.

Yong-Soo Chung:
Over the years, Matt grew steadily within this industry and eventually ended up launching Swim University in 2006.

Matt Giovanisci:
Started that in 2006, and has basically been running that ever since. Still running it today.

Yong-Soo Chung:
Swim University caters to a very specific niche homeowners with pools and hot tubs. According to their page, Swim University has made pool and hot tub care easy for more than 10 million homeowners. Matt has mentioned on his website that Swim University makes over $250,000 a year. I have mentioned the importance of owning a niche in several of my previous episodes, but Matt's story is probably one of the greatest examples of how to find and own your niche. I'm sure you must be very curious about how exactly Matt went from Pool Storeboy to the owner of a niche business that has served more than 10 million homeowners and made several million dollars in revenue. Let's find out. Hi, my name is Yong-Soo Chung, and I'm a first generation Korean American entrepreneur living the American dream. I started Urban EDC to cater to enthusiasts of everyday carrier. I also own two other successful ventures GrowthJet, a climate neutral, certified third party logistics company for emerging ecommerce brands, and Spotted by Humphrey, an online boutique curating dog goods for good dogs. Through these three ventures, my business has generated over $20 million in eight years, and I'm here to tell you how you can do the same. On this episode of First Class Founders, I'm sharing insights from my conversation with Matt Giovanisci, the founder of incredibly successful ventures such as Swim University, Roasty, Coffee, Brew, Cabin, and Moneylab. Over the course of our conversation, we spoke on a wide variety of topics, such as his journey from Pool Storeboy to founding Swim University, the various revenue streams of Swim University, compiling all of his knowledge gained over the years on Moneylab, and finally implementing the Swim University model. Elsewhere, we also spoke about something called the Money Lab Rules, which is a set of ten rules that Matt has posted on his website. Matt explained how these rules came about and why he considers them to be his Ten Commandments while starting a new business. Any business premium members of First Class Founders will be treated to an extra segment of the podcast episode, where they will be able to hear Matt's explanation of the ten Money Lab rules. Of course, they can also listen to the raw, unedited version of my interview with Matt in a private subscribers only feed, become a premium member of First Class Founders by signing up at FirstClassFounders.com/join. I'll put the link in the show notes as well. And now let's get down to business. From the day that Matt started working in that pool store, the swim industry became, for the lack of a better word, his industry.

Matt Giovanisci:
And then at around when I was like 22, 23, I got hired to do marketing for one of the companies I had worked for. So I was doing corporate marketing for a pool company.

Yong-Soo Chung:
To be fair, it's not like Matt was obsessive about swimming in pools and selling those products. He did try other things, too.

Matt Giovanisci:
I also knew how to design websites at the time because I was in a band and we needed a website. So I learned how to do that kind of on the side.

Yong-Soo Chung:
Yeah. Matt started a band called Remember Tomorrow with his friends, and they even put out an album called Enjoy. This was back in 2002. Of course, he could have gone to college if he wanted to, but he decided not to.

Matt Giovanisci:
Skipped college because I was making good money at the pool store. And as a marketing director already without.

Yong-Soo Chung:
A degree, it was in 2004 that Matt had his first real business idea. He decided to design a website called Niagara Pools and Spas that would teach people how to take care of their swimming pools and hot tubs. Seeing as how he had worked in the swimming pools industry all of his life, the vertical was an absolute no brainer. Niagara Pools and Spas didn't quite survive the test of time, but the idea lingered on. In 2005, Matt purchased a domain name, Swimuniversity.com, for $9. It would be a while before he would launch it, though.

Matt Giovanisci:
I ended up creating Swim University to sort of marry the worlds of website design, which I knew how to do, and pool knowledge, which I had. So started that in 2006 and have basically been running that ever since, still running it today.

Yong-Soo Chung:
For those who are unaware, swim University is a website that is essentially about pool care and hot tub care.

Matt Giovanisci:
It's a website, it's a content site. Started as a niche site, started as an affiliate marketing site, has now grown into, like we sell digital products, we sell physical products, we have a YouTube channel, we have social media. We're kind of everywhere trying to dominate the pool education market and hot tub education market.

Yong-Soo Chung:
The SwimU team is quite lean and comprises of three people: Matt, his brother, and another person named Steph.

Matt Giovanisci:
All of our content is created by Steph, who is my fiance soon to be wife. She does all of our blog posts, our YouTube videos, and that's mostly the content there.

Yong-Soo Chung:
Matt's brother helps out with social media.

Matt Giovanisci:
We dabbled in social media a little bit with my brother, helped me with that, doing some reels for Instagram and TikTok.

Yong-Soo Chung:
As for Matt himself...

Matt Giovanisci:
I was more part of the sending emails building funnels. I do all the tech, so I design the website, I code the website. Anything that needs to be updated or changed, I'm the guy that does that. We developed some new products last year, so we introduced Pool Chemicals last year, so I had to design the labels for that, speak to the vendors, take all the pictures and put that up build. I had to code the Shopify site redesign that last year.

Yong-Soo Chung:
That is in 2022. Matt spent almost all of his time for Swim University, or Swimu as he calls it, behind the scenes.

Matt Giovanisci:
You know, it's like a CEO CTO role of of Swim University. And I spent most of my time there last year because of trying to get physical products set up.

Yong-Soo Chung:
But that was last year. This year things are much better, much calmer.

Matt Giovanisci:
I would say 25, maybe even maybe 30% of my time is there.

Yong-Soo Chung:
But there's still enough SwimU work to keep Matt on his toes.

Matt Giovanisci:
Even this morning, I was setting up AB tests for an Oto landing page for people subscribe to our website and our products. I also run Facebook ads. I also keep an eye on our Google ads and increase the price. Or decrease the price. I do all the accounting. I don't do accounting. I do all the bookkeeping and metrics CEO crap.

Yong-Soo Chung:
There are three primary revenue streams generated by Swim University affiliate links, digital products, and physical products.

Matt Giovanisci:
20% comes from affiliate links, so we do still recommend products through our content. So 20% comes from that all 100% Amazon, by the way. 40% comes from our digital products, which are courses, and then 40% comes from our physical products, which are pool and hot tub chemicals that we sell directly.

Yong-Soo Chung:
I was surprised when I heard that even after all these years, SwimU was still the largest driver of Matt's revenue.

Matt Giovanisci:
Oh, yeah. Oh. By 90%.

Yong-Soo Chung:
I asked Matt what he thought could be the reason for that. Was it SwimU's longevity? Was it the unique niche aspect of it? Was it because of the huge size of the pool industry?

Matt Giovanisci:
Definitely not the industry. It's a big industry. But as a company that mostly only does digital products, we do physical, but there's a lot of physical products we could sell in the pool industry, in the hot tub industry, but one, I don't have the capital to do that. And I also don't want to run an ecommerce site that big. Yes, the longevity of the brand has helped.

Yong-Soo Chung:
Matt thinks the uniqueness of the company and the highly specific nature of the niche may helped SwimU survive for as long as it has and also contribute to both the revenue and its success.

Matt Giovanisci:
Again, it's one of those businesses still to this day where I am trial and erroring my way through a profitable lane that's carved out kind of just for me, because at this stage of the game, there's really no other company like ours. And so far, again, no one has really impeded with us in what we do. But it's because we've carved out this lane that no one is operating in, right? So it's not like it's not like I found some secret. It's just this is our lane, and we stick to it.

Yong-Soo Chung:
Despite the fact that he and SwimU are both virtually unchallenged, Matt is clear on one thing. He does not want to expand the business and take on additional responsibilities.

Matt Giovanisci:
I'm not willing to do that as a person because I like the way that my life is set up and how much freedom and flexibility I have. And so, therefore, I don't want to jeopardize that by going, oh, no, now I have 50 employees all over the world, and we have a warehouse in Fresno, and that's what it would take to grow a business like that. And again, not willing to do that.

Yong-Soo Chung:
But there is something that he is looking to expand. And even though Swim University involved a lot of trial and error, it did lead to a surprisingly profitable venture for Matt. Before I tell you about that, let me quickly tell you about my own niche business, urbanedc.com. Like Matt Giovanisci, I, too, started a business in a very small niche everyday carry gear. Except in my case, I already had a competitor I needed to be wary of. In recent years, the everyday carry community has exploded. People love posting photos of what they're carrying with them on a daily basis, whether it's a pen, flashlight, keychain, bottle opener, or a pocket knife. Heck, even Amazon was selling EDC gear. And you might look at them and think that they're my biggest competitor and there's no way I could compete with them. But here's the thing. Amazon wasn't dedicated specifically to EDC. That meant people looking specifically for EDC, people like me would often get frustrated one day. It struck me that this was a problem I needed to solve. There wasn't a well curated shop just for everyday carry gear lovers. I wanted to create an experience serving this community, and that's exactly what I've done. If you're a gear geek like me, looking for the best flashlights, titanium pens, fidget tools, or the latest pocket knives, I literally built this website for you. If you're not a gear lover, we've been told our shop has the best gifts for dads, graduates, or anybody else who appreciates gear, like a CNC machined, fancy bottle opener, and go check out our awesome gear at urbanedc.com. Before that little detour about UrbanEDC, I was about to tell you what all that trial and erroring with Swim University eventually resulted in. This needs a bit of a backstory. Back when Matt started Swim University, he didn't really have much help in building and growing it.

Matt Giovanisci:
Because the category was so niche, I had some help through, again, some paid communities and some podcasts that I would listen to. But every time I would consult with somebody about my website, they were just like, your website different, man. I don't understand the audience, because a lot of the advice back in the day would be, hey, get your site in front of someone else's audience who has a similar audience. And I'm like, well, no one does. I'm the only one in this niche right now doing this. And there was no forums at the time when I was coming up, so I felt very alone in that.

Yong-Soo Chung:
In his own words, it took Matt a long time to learn how to grow Swim University.

Matt Giovanisci:
Because a lot of it, I had to just trial and error my way through it. And it took me, I say, seven to eight years to really get Swim University to grow to what it is today, like, where I got it pretty dialed in.

Yong-Soo Chung:
So when he saw Swim University growing and becoming more and more successful, Matt wondered whether it could be used as a formula for building a successful business in a niche category.

Matt Giovanisci:
And I was like, I want to take that framework that I developed basically over those seven to eight years and see if I could replicate it in a different industry in an 8th of the time. Can I do it in a year as opposed to eight? And that's what Roasty Coffee was.

Yong-Soo Chung:
Roasty Coffee. Buoyed by the success of Swim University, Matt decided to start roastycoffee.com in March 2015.

Matt Giovanisci:
And I was able to grow it very quickly. It was able to make a lot, like, decent money until Amazon kind of, like, had their thing in 2018 and killed my commissions.

Yong-Soo Chung:
The Amazon thing that Matt refers to is Amazon's decision to change the way it paid out affiliate commissions and switch from a variable payout to a fixed fee, which cut revenues by 50%. At that point, Matt had already been contemplating a change in his business model. He knew and often would tell others that all it takes is one board meeting to completely destroy a business that relied solely on affiliate commissions.

Matt Giovanisci:
So at that point, I was like, you know what? This site? I really didn't care about the topic. I'm interested in coffee, but not that interested in coffee. I drink it every day, and I know how to make it in all different forms. But I was just like, I could sell this and do something I'm way more passionate in, which is home brewing. So I sold the coffee site.

Yong-Soo Chung:
Matt sold Roasty Coffee for $55,000 in 2018. The final amount wasn't that important, to be honest. What was important was that the Swim University framework, the model that he had developed through trial and error over the years, had worked. What was important was that Matt now knew he could build an audience for a business in any vertical that he chose. And that's when Moneylab and Brew cabin happened.

Matt Giovanisci:
The whole goal of Moneylab was to basically share all of the things I had been working on behind the scenes and to kind of have an outlet to, for lack of a better term, brag about how hard of a worker I am and how diverse of a creator I am. So that was sort of like an outlet to be like, hey, somebody please pat me on the back for all my work. And then I started Brew Cabin, which is an actual passion project. It doesn't really make any money except fund the hobby itself.

Yong-Soo Chung:
Money Lab, on the other hand, is different from Swimu or roasted coffee or Brew Cabin, and has the potential to make a lot more revenue because of the industry that it's in.

Matt Giovanisci:
One is an industry where I'm helping you do a c hore, and I'm not actually going out and helping you, so I'm just teaching you how to do the chore correctly. Not really the funnest product to sell. But with Money Lab, I'm teaching you how to make more money, which is a much more desirable product, and I could deliver that all digitally, which is harder to do at Swim University. So I think industry wise, Moneylab definitely could outperform Swim University by a long mile in the way that I would want to do it.

Yong-Soo Chung:
Just to give you an idea of how well Moneylab is positioned to make revenue, here are some numbers.

Matt Giovanisci:
Yeah, Moneylab last year did $100,000, and I barely put out any content. I wasn't tweeting every day. I wasn't doing a lot. That's kind of its baseline.

Yong-Soo Chung:
In fact, Matt plans to diversify his portfolio of businesses further and reduce the load on SwimU this year.

Matt Giovanisci:
This year is the year where I grow Moneylab and maybe take another ten to 20% of the revenue share between those two businesses. So maybe Swimming diversity is doing 70% of the income and Moneylab is doing the other 30. It's technically growth, even though it feels like if you look at it percentages wise, it's just splitting the 100% pie differently. But, yeah, it's like we're growing a new brand because the original brand, over all these years, it just keeps getting more and more solid. The wheels are just more and more grease. It's just a well oiled machine.

Yong-Soo Chung:
But what exactly is moneylab? Well, simply put, Moneylab is a personal journal that Matt launched in 2016 to keep an account of the various business challenges he undertook within Swim University.

Matt Giovanisci:
I started Money Lab to sort of put my business side of myself personally out there in the world. And all essentially it is, is I do business challenges within Swim University and my other brands, and I document them sort of as of like a journal style of a website. So there's no SEO. The content is really all very personal and very business focused on my businesses, as opposed to just like giving general advice. I am starting to dabble a little bit more into general advice, but just to sort of like, take what I've done over the past 1520 years and distill it down into something that's a little different than what's out there right now.

Yong-Soo Chung:
In other words, it is his space, where he shares both his learnings and his wins. There is also Moneylab Pro, which is a membership that people can join and they will get access to practically all of Moneylab's offerings.

Matt Giovanisci:
It's basically I centralized all of my products. So over the years, I have been building online courses in different disciplines. So, like, I have a course on email marketing and SEO and affiliate marketing and content creation and page speed and all of these different courses that I had. And I wrapped them all up into a and I added a community component to it as well. So now you have access to all my courses. I even built a WordPress theme that's super fast all of my courses. The community is all kind of one thing, and I just titled it Moneylab Pro.

Yong-Soo Chung:
Moneylab is basically Matt's attempt to crystallize his learnings in a way that people can implement it and build their own versions of Swim University. Or at least that's the way he sees it in his own head.

Matt Giovanisci:
I don't market it that way, but to me, that's like, okay, I want to help the next person build their Swim University for themselves.

Yong-Soo Chung:
I personally love Moneylab in particular for two reasons. One, because Matt is refreshingly honest about stuff and everything he writes on Moneylab. More on that later in the show. And two, Matt has made a list of ten rules for money making that I think encapsulate everything there is about building your own business and brand.

Matt Giovanisci:
So there are ten rules that I wrote in 2016 when I started the site, and the idea was I needed boundaries when it came to what the type of content or the type of business I wanted to start.

Yong-Soo Chung:
The idea for these ten rules came to him when he saw the famous post about Chuck Jones's rules for the Roadrunner, the one that keeps making the rounds of the Internet.

Matt Giovanisci:
Chuck Jones wrote all of these rules, which I linked to in my About page, where it's like, anybody who would take it over could know, okay, the coyote only does this. The Roadrunner can only say meat neep, or whatever those boundaries were. I really liked that idea.

Yong-Soo Chung:
The ten rules are essentially Matt setting boundaries for himself before starting a business to ensure that he does not waste his time and energies on things that don't matter. During our interview, I asked Matt to share individual thoughts on each of these ten rules in greater detail. I asked him to explain what they meant to him and Swim University specifically. Matt very kindly obliged me and dished out some really wonderful advice pertinent to each of the ten rules. You can find all the ten rules on Matt's website, Moneylab.co. But if you really want to hear about these rules from Matt himself, I would recommend that you sign up for the First Class Founders membership. One of the perks of the First Class Founders membership is the premium content that I craft specifically for my members. For example, for this episode, premium members of First Class Founders will hear an extra segment in this podcast in which I share Matt's explanations about each of the ten Money Lab rules. For example, regarding rule two, be honest and 100% transparent, Matt says.

Matt Giovanisci:
So I found the best marketing in the world is just being honest.

Yong-Soo Chung:
And about rule four, show don't tell. He says...

Matt Giovanisci:
If I told you how to do something as opposed to showing you how I do it, one of those things is a lot more impactful.

Yong-Soo Chung:
My personal favorite? Oh, that's easy. It's definitely rule number one have fun, make money.

Matt Giovanisci:
Money is not the first priority in starting a business.

Yong-Soo Chung:
It seems absolutely counterintuitive. But when you hear Matt explain why, it suddenly makes so much more sense, go sign up for the First Class Founders membership. Trust me, you won't regret it comes with a ton of other perks as well. For example, members of the First Class Founders also get early access to podcast episodes, bonus episodes, including the entire raw, unedited interview delivered to you via private members only podcast feed, the ability to ask me anything, and much more. Head on over to Firstclassfounders.com/join. I'll put the link in the Show Notes. I'll see you there. If you're a premium member of First Class Founders, this is where you'd be listening to Matt explain each one of his Ten Money Lab roles in detail. But now let's get to the part where I asked Matt what advice, if any, he would give the younger version of himself if he ever got a chance to meet him.

Matt Giovanisci:
I've actually, I've written an article on this. Like, the article was about me building a fake time machine and going back in time at different points of my business life and to give myself advice during those pivotal moments.

Yong-Soo Chung:
I'll leave a link to this article in the Show Notes.

Matt Giovanisci:
One of the things that I think I did correctly was I started just devouring personal finance books because I realized at the time that I was really bad with money. Like, I was definitely a paycheck to paycheck guy. I had an expensive car, I had an expensive house, and this is at 25. And I said, well, if I'm going to start my own business, I can't be that way anymore because my business will fail. If I can't manage my own personal finances, how do I expect to manage my business finances?

Yong-Soo Chung:
That's really good advice for everyone, I think. In fact, Matt reiterated that he would give the same advice. Get your money and your personal finances. Correct. To budding entrepreneurs who are looking to start a business of their own.

Matt Giovanisci:
Because once if you understand personal finance, which is not difficult, you understand that business finances is much easier. It's the same thing. It's just bigger. There's still budgets. There's still money in, money out. They're still paying yourself first. There's still all of these principles. I feel like a lot of people don't talk about that especially. It's why a lot of businesses fail honestly, because they terrible with money management or they're bad with cash flow management and they end up spending too much and going under.

Yong-Soo Chung:
I found Matt Giovanisci to be an insightful entrepreneur with some brilliant ideas to share. I consider myself fortunate that I was able to have this conversation with him and learn about his journey. If you want to connect with Matt, you can find ways to reach him on his website.

Matt Giovanisci:
I am over at Moneylab.co. And I would love for people to sign up for Moneylab Pro and join my community and talk to me every week. I do a happy hour every week on Zoom, and I got a bunch of courses in there. I got a WordPress theme that's awesome. If you're doing online business, which I'm assuming you are, that's a fun place to be. And I'm on Twitter all the time.

Yong-Soo Chung:
All right, that wraps up today's show. In the next episode of First Class Founders. We're talking to Sam Brown. Sam has skyrocketed, his personal brand on LinkedIn. I talked to Sam about what his plans are for monetizing his audience. His entrepreneurial journey is also pretty crazy, so you definitely don't want to miss out on this one. And one last thing before I go. If you're a new listener and you enjoyed this episode, you can follow the show by going to Firstclassfounder.com and clicking on the link that matches your preferred podcast player, like Apple Podcast or Spotify. Or you can also add your voice to the show by leaving a message on Firstclassfounders.com. For example, what did you think of this episode specifically? And when you get a chance, also head over to Firstclassfounders.com/Review and leave the podcast a five-star review, please? It helps new listeners discover the show. Thank you so much. If you want to connect with me, you can hit me up on Twitter at yongsoochung. I'm pretty active there and would love to connect with you. You can find links to all my social accounts in the show notes. All right, I'll see you in the next episode of First Class Founders.